Save Article

A Primer for Bremer

By

Andrew Roberts

Updated June 11, 2003 12:48 a.m. ET

"In an age of renewed bellicosity towards Asia," writes the historian David Gilmour of Britain's greatest imperialist, "it is alarming to realise that no politician on either side of the Atlantic knows a tenth as much about the continent as Lord Curzon did." First of all George Curzon read deeply about Asia, then he traveled widely there, then he wrote several learned books on the region and only afterward did he go out to rule over vast tracts of it.